Sigfox Founder Seeks ROI in IoT | EE Times

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Ludovic Le Moan is under the gun to find a return on investment in the Internet of Things this year. After raising $150 million in five rounds, the co-founder and CEO of Sigfox faces a deadline of breaking even before the end of 2018. To hit his target, Le Moan estimates he will need to have about 10 million paying nodes on various Sigfox networks around the world. So far, he has about 4 million. Whether he makes his target or not, Le Moan has been driving since the creation of Sigfox in 2000 a vision of creating the lowest cost network for the Internet of Things. Today, a Sigfox link costs about $1.20-$2 in hardware, down from about $12 several years ago. The company’s revenue comes mainly from connection fees, currently pegged at about $5-$6 per device per year for users with at least 10,000 nodes. Sigfox revealed a design last year that could drop the...